The Future of Football: Navigating The 2024 Landscape of Gambling Sponsorships
A plethora of corporate bodies, stakeholders in different sectors like banks, beverage companies, car companies among other notable firms are the most significant sponsors of top-level teams in football. However, sports betting and online gambling providers are among the most common sponsors. The convergence of gambling and football remains a hotly contested issue, since it disappeared in the fog of social criticism in the past. The question remains: what really is the degree of impact of these betting firms on sport?
Football takes the prime position in the total amount of money stacked in betting which estimates around £1.1 billion per annum. Soccer and the online gambling industry have been lately hurt by many scandals which helped raise the issue of how deep the sponsorship bonds are.
Online Gambling promoters have founded several sponsorship types aimed at football followers, with the shirt-front and stadium sponsorships being widespread.
What types of companies provide sponsorship to football teams in England?
From car manufacturing to electricity providence to food and drinks company, the football teams sponsorship is a wide range. Conversely, the gambling fraternity spans almost all leagues with 14 bookmakers supporting 15% of the English football sponsorships.
Gambling does not deal any risk by default, so banning all game works may not be a good idea. As it stands now, supporters of football are under the influence of numerous gambling advertisements, a few of which are hard to separate from the promotional content published on social networks.
Even though it is possible for those two elements to cohabitate without any harm, we can notice parliament’s attempts to regulate the advertising of products such as tobacco and alcohol. Premier League decides from now on to phase-out betting companies’ names sponsoring shirts to be done totally by 2026. On the other hand, it is yet to be seen which way these companies will gain dominance over the next 4 years.
Which league is sponsored by the highest number of gambling companies?
The Premier League, despite the plans to phase them out by the year 2026, remains the one that houses the highest number of betting partners, with 40% of its teams displaying the names of the online gambling firms on their kits. The second rank is occupied by financial services.
The Financial Times has indicated that the eight clubs of a Premier League sponsored by online gambling brands accumulate around £60 million a year from these deals, not such a small amount which needs to be compensated for the 2026/7 season.
Directly linking online gambling sponsorships with changes in viewer behavior is rather difficult, although an amount of money spent by these companies on team sponsorship proves that they assume there will be a beneficial return.
In the English Football League (EFL), online gambling companies do not have such a huge presence unlike in the higher leagues. Only 5 Championship clubs of Championship and none from League One have bookmakers as their sponsors.
Since the Premier League’s self-imposed provision of not accepting betting sponsorships has not been extended to other leagues, the doubt regarding whether online gambling companies will flock to sponsor lower-level teams emerges.
What has been the viewership for teams sponsored by gambling companies over the last year?
West Ham ranks the highest in terms of an average attendance as the fans come to every game in the home 62,466. This means the gambling sponsor gets a viewing of more than 1.2 million potential audiences only just watching the home matches for the whole season.
A survey revealing that Britons spend on average £70 per week on gambling and considering that 76.8% of football fans engage in gambling, demonstrates the effectiveness of shirt-front sponsorship to bring a high value of advertising.
It causes the cost of sponsorship to be higher than £435 million in one season from the presence of advertising only.
Notwithstanding the figures pertaining to match attendances alone without taking into account viewers who view the success via either streaming services or television. Besides the fact that verified figures for a game on TV and streaming are hard to estimate; they greatly increase the advertising scope and value for the shirt front sponsors.
What sets the UK apart from other nations?
Unlike in the UK, gambling is absent on the jerseys of teams of other leagues.
Only the German Bundesliga and the French Ligue 1 have betting companies as their shirt sponsors – Winamax sponsors Le Havre in France and VfB Stuttgart in Germany while Partouche sponsors Montpellier in France. For Germany’s Bundesliga, this implies only 5.6 % of the team sponsorship belongs to the gambling, as opposed to Ligue 1 of France which gambling depicts 10.5% of the teams.
In What Countries the English Sponsored Corporations are located? Among 14 betting businesses supporting British teams only five have their seats in the UK and three of them don’t have websites that can be opened from Britain.
In addition to revenue generation from British audiences, these businesses do campaign to capture the attention of overseas fans, mainly the Filipino and Australians who, as counted have, high followings both in each country.
Where do English sponsor companies operate?
The British team’s landscape illustrates a very curious tendency of sports sponsorship, indeed. Out of the 14 betting companies that support the teams count as sponsors, only five have the HQs here, in the UK. Moreover, three of the UK based sponsors do not operate websites that are accessible in Britain yet, which could point at the goal to reach wider markets beyond the domestic area. This case again explains a more general marketing view; brand marks do not address only local supporters but show them capable of catching customers beyond Britain. It is noticeable that the Philippines and Australia have the fastest growth rate, which proves that it isn’t a case of ‘a brand with a splash only in Europe’ but also of a global brand icon.
What’s next for English football?
The researchers at the University of Bristol have recently pointed to the increasingly prominent placement of betting imagery in football as something that is “overwhelming and inescapable”, leading to anxiety and compulsive gambling behavior. This means 2.3 % of the population of problem gamblers are responsible for 50 % of the betting industry’s revenue. This concern is also aggravated by the government’s statement that the costs of supporting the individuals with gambling addictions usually lie somewhere between one billion and 1.77 billion pounds per year.
Though football clubs of the Premier League have made sure to get rid of sponsorship from gambling companies on their shirts in the following some years, this does not in any way downplay the increasing blatant publicity of gambling in the sport. This continues through the sleeve sponsors, stadium sponsorships as well as team partnerships with the case of English Football League’s sponsorship by SkyBet being a clear example of how little the adoption of shirt sponsorships has changed this trend. When social media advertisements are used to promote betting and they tend to show up alongside organic content, it poses an insidious risk of influencing views, particularly in young people. However, these ongoing endeavors to scissor off the direct linkages between the wild gambling promotion and football fans’ game is not enough. It may only prove the beginning, holding the key for changing the way football fans behave in terms of gambling.
Image: Alexander Nadrilyanski – pexels.com
